What Is This Storyboard About?

In this storyboard I’m going to look at Carnival Music, in Dutch this is called “carnavals muziek.” At first, I’m going to investigate how it differs from modern hitsongs. I think this is very interesting, because it is both music that people easily can sing along to. Also, when you listen to it, you can clearly hear how different each kind of music is, but it is both very popular.

After analysing the difference, I am going to take a look at the difference in carnival music itself. Because it is celebrated in two different provinces in The Netherlands there must be a kind of difference in the music too. One main difference will be the language. This is due to the fact that the lyrics of the music in Brabant are in Dutch and in Limburg they are in Limburgs, which can be compared to a mixture of Flemish, Dutch and German. One thing that both kinds of music have in common is that usually the songs have to be easy to listen and sing along to. Ideally, when you heard the song one time, you can sing along. This leads me to the following research question:

Is there a significant difference between carnival music from Limburg and Noord-Brabant which is not related to language?

I will do this by using different Spotify playlists that make up my corpus. Also, I think that comparing various audio features to each other can give me an idea about what makes each kind of music different. At first, I’m going to look how these differ from carnival music and current hitsongs and how this is different for Noord-Brabant and Limburg. The one thing I would like to find out is if there is a significant difference between the carnival music from Limburg and Brabant that isn’t language.

What Is Carnival?

Originally, Carnival (in Dutch Carnaval or Vastelaovend) is Catholic feast.[1] It is officially celebrated on the three days before Ash Wednesday, but in practice, everyone mostly starts celebrating on thurday instead of sunday. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lent and thus for a lot of people the last chance to party. The word vastelaovend in Limburgs means vastenavond in Dutch, which in English can be translated to Lentnight. This, in turn, could be led back to the night before Lent.

The carnival season starts on the 11th of November, 11/11 at 11:11 am. Eleven is seen as the number of the crazy and that is why almost everything has some attachment to this number.

Carnival is celebrated in the south of The Netherlands and mostly in the provinces Noord-Brabant and Limburg. The ways it is celebrated can also be diveded in two mean variants; “het Bourgondisch Carnaval” and “het Rijnlands Carnaval.” In Brabant you will see especially the first one. Everyone dresses simple and the same, because everyone is the same. This way, classes are not visible anymore. The second kind of celebration is the one you will see in Limburg. Everyone dresses extraordinary. The crazier the better. Ofcourse, there are a lot of local adaptations of these two main kinds of celebration.

[1] Wettelijke Feestdagen. Carnaval. https://www.wettelijke-feestdagen.nl/Feestdagen/Carnaval.aspx.

Vastelaovesgezicht 2019

Vastelaovesgezicht 2019

Carnival Music Is More Similar Than Current Hitsongs.

What Does This Scatterplot Show?

For this visualisation I used three different Spotify playlists; Vastelaovend 2020, Carnaval Brabant and Nederlandse Hits 2020. To compare the carnival music to the current hits in The Netherlands, I didn’t distinguish between Limburg and Brabant. I compared the valence, on the x axis, to the energy, on the y axis, of both playlists. The size of the dots gives an idea of the loudness of each individual song. In the table below the means and standard deviations of each of Spotify’s audio features is shown. I have chosen valence, energy and loudness because, as you can see, the difference between these features is the highest.

Audio Feature Carnavival Music Hits in The Netherlands
Acousticness M = 0.213 SD = 0.173 M = 0.291 SD = 0.272
Danceability M = 0.669 SD = 0.135 M = 0.665 SD = 0.123
Energy M = 0.841 SD = 0.109 M = 0.619 SD = 0.163
Instrumentalness M = 0.008 SD = 0.059 M = 0.009 SD = 0.067
Liveness M = 0.250 SD = 0.198 M = 0.155 SD = 0.121
Loudness M = -5.44 SD = 1.66 M = -6.38 SD = 2.45
Speechiness M = 0.084 SD = 0.065 M = 0.086 SD = 0.081
Valence M = 0.792 SD = 0.180 M = 0.511 SD = 0.220
Mode M = 0.876 SD = 0.330 M = 0.630 SD = 0.485

Means and Standard Deviations of various Spotify Audio Features

What Is The Difference Between Carnival Music And Current Hitsongs?

What stands out the most is that the carnival music is mostly situated in the same quarter, high energy/high valence, while the hitsongs are more spread out, only avoiding the low energy/high valence quarter. This indicates that carnival music is generally very similar. As is shown in the table and the scatterplot, carnival music is more often in a major mode. The music is almost always “feel-good” music and so, the use of a major mode seems like a logical decision.

There Is No Significant Difference In Audio Features Between Limburg And Brabant.

What Is The Difference Between The Audio Features Of Songs From Limburg And Noord-Brabant?

To find out what the difference between songs from Limburg and Brabant is, I examined the means and standard deviations of the playlists I used. What becomes clear is that there is no significant difference between the two. The songs from Limburg tend to be in a Major mode more often and the variation of the mode in Brabant is higher than in Limburg. Except for the language and mode, all features tend to be very similar. This is also visible in the table below.

Audio Feature Limburg Noord-Brabant
Acousticness M = 0.239 SD = 0.185 M = 0.183 SD = 0.154
Danceability M = 0.635 SD = 0.143 M = 0.707 SD = 0.115
Energy M = 0.804 SD = 0.112 M = 0.882 SD = 0.089
Instrumentalness M = 0.003 SD = 0.029 M = 0.013 SD = 0.079
Liveness M = 0.222 SD = 0.173 M = 0.281 SD = 0.220
Loudness M = -5.91 SD = 1.27 M = -4.92 SD = 1.89
Speechiness M = 0.073 SD = 0.064 M = 0.097 SD = 0.065
Valence M = 0.776 SD = 0.176 M = 0.810 SD = 0.183
Mode M = 0.994 SD = 0.232 M = 0.800 SD = 0.402

Means and Standard Deviations of various Spotify Audio Features

What Does The Scatterplot Show?

The scatterplot to the left shows on the danceability on the x axis and valence on the y axis. The size tells us something about the loudness of each song and the colour explains from which province the song is. This plot also makes clear that the songs indeed are very similar. The songs are also evenly mixed, they don’t tend to cluster according to province.

Two Versions Of The Same Song Are Very Similar.

Do Different Versions Of The Same Song Differ?

Because there is a language difference in the music from Brabant and Limburg, I thought it’d be interesting to compare a song. Sometimes artists make covers of songs that are popular in the other province. In this case I choose the song Laot de zon in dien hart and Laat de zon in je hart, which means let the sun into your heart. When you listen to the tracks, the two versions seem to be very alike.

Audio Feature Rene Schuurmans Beppie Kraft
Danceability 0.731 0.786
Energy 0.807 0.791
Key 9 3
Loudness -5.508 -6.294
Mode 1 1
Speechiness 0.0289 0.0279
Acousticness 0.636 0.431
Instrumentalness 0 0
Liveness 0.275 0.332
Valence 0.963 0.939
Tempo 123.986 123.94

Means of Spotify Audio Features

As becomes clear from the table, the only big difference between the two songs is the ‘loudness’ feature and the key. The version of Rene Schuurmans is in A major and the version of Beppie Kraft is in D# major. The dynamic time warping shows us that the songs also line up perfectly. When you look closely you can see a straight diagonal line from 0 to 200. This suggests that the only important difference for a song is the language it’s in.

Carnival Music Is Very Repetitive.

Do These SSM Give Us An Idea About The Structure Of Carnival Music?

When we take a look at the self-similaritie matrices for timbre and chroma features for each of the songs, we can tell a lot about the structure of each song. If a song is very repetitive, you can also see this in these matrice.

Limburg

Nao ’t Zuuje seems to have a very simple and standard structure. It starts with a verse, a chorus, then again a verse and a chorus, a bridge and it ends with another chorus. The structure isn’t easy to see as with other songs, but this could be due to the fact that there are some small changes, like adding percussion. The second song, VRUNJ TOT DE ALLERLESTE RUNJ, does not have a very clear structure. It is repetitive, but in smaller sections. It does start with a verse and a chorus, but the second verse is a lot shorter and the seconde chorus longer. Then there is a bridge, some instrumental part and a modulation to again a longer chorus. The song keeps using the same building blocks, but not in a way that you can see an obvious structure. 1000 Sterre, on the other hand, does have a very obvious structure. It starts with a chorus and a verse, which is repeated. The song does not have a bridge, it’s just the chorus again. In contrast to the second song, this song has a very simple and repetitive structure.

Noord-Brabant

The Self-Similarity Matrix of Links Rechts shows that the song has a lot of repetitive blocks, but with little changes. It starts with a short intro and then sort of a verse. But the melody of the verse keeps coming back. When there are no lyrics, they sing the melody on “la la la.” At the end, the song speeds up. Because the same building block keeps coming back a little different, the matrix isn’t very clear. Kali does show an obvious structure. It begins with an instrumental bit and then there is a verse and a chorus. After a smaller instrumental part, the verse and chorus are repeated. After an instrumental bridge of a variation of the melody of the chorus, the song ends with an shortened chorus. The last song, Potentie, shows, again, a very vague matrix. It starts with three verses which are very alike, but with small alterations. After the chorus, there is a very long verse. It ends with the chorus and an instrumental part. Throughout the whole song you can hear this part coming back. In the matrix the chorus are visible, but the rest of the song is kind of a mess.

Conlusion

What becomes clear from this matrices is that carnival music doesn’t always have the same structure. Some songs are very simple and obvious, while others are more complex in terms of structure. The one thing they do have in common is that all the songs are repetitive, some a little bit more then others. Overall, the songs are easy to follow and you should be able to sing along to them quite quick.

Carnival Music Differs in Tempo.

What do the tempograms show?

What becomes clear is that even though the songs seem to be very similar, the tempi of the songs really differ from each other.

Limburg

The first of the songs from Limburg, Nao ’t Zuuje, is a very difficult song for Spotify to define. I think this is due to the fact that the song shifts between two time signatures, 6/8 and 9/8. And the song makes almost no use of drums. Originally, the song has a tempo of 95 BPM, which matches the bottom line in the tempogram. The second song, VRUNJ TOT DE ALLERLESTE RUNJ, has a tempo around 85 BPM. When you listen to the song, you can hear that the drums aren’t always present and they aren’t always on the same beat. This could explain why the tempogram isn’t so steady. The last song, 1000 Sterre, has a tempo a bit slower then 140 BPM. In the pre-chorus of the song, there are no drums present and this is very clear to see in the tempogram. Overall, this song has a very steady tempo.

Noord-Brabant

The second row of tempograms shows the songs from Brabant. The first song, Links Rechts, shows two lines. One at 110 and one at 150 BPM. At the and we see two lines at 85 and 130 BPM. In the song itself, you don’t really hear drums but you do hear very clear beat. So it’s strange to me to see that there is such a difficulty at deciding the tempo of the song. The song does have a tempo of 150 BPM and at the end it speeds up. I think itis strange that you can’t see this in the tempogram. The song Kali has a tempo of 95 BPM. You can see a lot of noise in the tempogram, but the tempo is very steady. The song does use drums throughout the whole song, but the noise could be due to the use of a percussion. There are two points at which the line shows a gap. This is right after the chorus, where the drums stop for a second. The last song, Potentie, has a very clear tempo of 150 BPM. The unstability at the beginning of the tempogram could be due to the fact that there is no drums in the beginning of the song. The tempogram shows almost no noise at all. When you listen to the song it becomes very clear that they made the beat with a computerprogram. This explains the fact that there is no noise.

Conclusion

When we look at all the different tempograms, you can’t say that the tempo of a song determines what kind of carnival song is. The tempi really differ a lot. What you can see is when a song had been made with mostly a computer or if someone played the instruments themself.

A Classifier Is Able To Distinguish Between Limburg And Brabant.

What Is The Outcome Of Using A Classifier On The Playlists?

I was very curious to see whether or not a classifier would be able to distinguish between songs from Limburg and Noord-Brabant. Because there is a difference in the size of the playlists, I used 110 songs for each playlist. What becomes visible is that the classifier does a good job. For the songs from Brabant is has about 67% right and for Limburg 76%. Everytime I run the classifier, the outcome is different. But everytime it does seem like the classifier is a little bit better at distinguishing the songs from Limburg.

Clustering

For clustering, I used the first 30 songs of each playlist. When we look at the clustering, we can devide the songs into three main clusters: 1) from Oh oh kammeroad to Kontebonke, 2) from Naar Voren, Naar Achter to Alie Exprezz and 3) from Dikke Tieten Kartoffelsalat to Schatje Mag Ik Je Foto.

Cluster Number of Songs Limburg Brabant
1 9 4 5
2 37 19 18
3 14 5 9

In the table above we can see how the songs are spread over the clusters. When I look at the songs in the clusters, I don’t really see any connection between the songs. I tried different amounts of songs, but everytime I was clueless. What does become clear is that, even with clustering, there is no distiction between songs from Limburg and Brabant.

Summary

The classifier can distinguish between songs from Limburg and Brabant. But, on the other hand, when we cluster these songs, they are treated the same. There is no significant clustering of these songs.

There Is No Significant Difference Between Carnival Music From Limburg And Noord-Brabant.

This whole portfolio is dedicated to finding out whether or not there is a difference between carnival music from Limburg and Noord-Brabant. I already knew that the biggest and most significant difference would be language which lead me to this research question:

Is there a significant difference between carnival music from Limburg and Noord-Brabant which is not related to language?

To answer this question I looked at how it differs from current hitsongs. What became clear from this, was that in contrast to the hitsongs, carnival music tends to be very similar. It wasn’t as spread out over the scatterplot. When I made another scatterplot, now consisting only of carnival songs, I saw that the same happened. While there are differences between songs, overall the outcome is the same. To show the similarity, I did a dynamic time warping of the same song in Limburg and Brabant. The biggest and almost only difference was the language. What became visible was that indeed the cover was almost exactly the same as the original. I also took a look at the structure of the most popular songs. I saw that while the songs were different from each other, mostly they were very repetitive. This does contribute to the fact that the music has to be easy to listen to and that you have to be able to sing along quickly. Ofcourse, some songs are more complex than others. Looking at the tempograms of these songs, I saw again that this is different for each of the songs. This tells me that there is no relation to tempo. A classifier was able to distinguish between songs from Brabant and Limburg. But when I tried to cluster these songs, no significant clustering came forth.

When I take all my results into acount, I come to this conclusion:

No, there is no significant difference between carnival music from Limburg and Noord-Brabant which is not related to language.

Apart from difference between songs themselves, there are no big differences between the two kinds of music.